Marlene B. Schwartz is the current director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health at the University of Connecticut.
Schwartz grew up in Columbia, Maryland. [1] She received her bachelor's degree from Haverford College in 1988. [2] She then attended Yale University, where she received her master's degree in 1992, her M.Phil. in 1993, and her Ph.D. in 1996. [3]
From 1996 to 2006, Schwartz was the co-director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders. [3] She then served as the associate director of the Rudd Center prior to July 2013, when she was announced as the next director of the center, replacing Kelly D. Brownell. [4] In 2014, Schwartz received the Sarah Samuels Award from the American Public Health Association. [5]
Dr. Schwartz's current research focuses on how nutrition and wellness policies implemented in schools, food banks, and local communities can improve food security, diet equity, and health outcomes. [6]
Schwartz is married to Jeff Babbin, with whom she has three daughters—Anna, Molly, and Charlotte. As of 2017, Schwartz and her family live in Guilford, Connecticut. [2]
Marion Nestle is an American molecular biologist, nutritionist, and public health advocate. She is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health Emerita at New York University. Her research examines scientific and socioeconomic influences on food choice, obesity, and food safety, emphasizing the role of food marketing.
Kelly David Brownell is a clinical psychologist and scholar of public health and public policy at Duke University whose work focuses on obesity and food policy. He is a former dean of Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy. Noted for his research dealing primarily with obesity prevention, as well as the intersection of behavior, environment, and health with public policy, Brownell advised former First Lady Michelle Obama's initiatives to address childhood obesity and has testified before Congress. He is credited with coining the term "yo-yo dieting", and was named as one of "The World's 100 Most Influential People" by Time Magazine in 2006.
The Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health, formerly named the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, is a non-profit research and public policy organization that promotes solutions to food insecurity, poor diet quality, and weight bias. Located in Hartford, Connecticut at The University of Connecticut, the Rudd Center was co-founded in March 2005 at Yale University by benefactor Leslie Rudd and Kelly D. Brownell. The Rudd Center moved from Yale to the University of Connecticut in December 2014.
A fat tax is a tax or surcharge that is placed upon fattening food, beverages or on overweight individuals. It is considered an example of Pigovian taxation. A fat tax aims to discourage unhealthy diets and offset the economic costs of obesity.
The Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) was founded in 1915 by Charles-Edward Amory Winslow and is one of the oldest public health masters programs in the United States. It is consistently rated among the best schools of public health in the country, receiving recent rankings of 3rd for its doctoral program in epidemiology. YSPH is both a department within the school of medicine as well as an independent, CEPH-certified school of public health.
Mary Swartz Rose was an American laboratory scientist and educator in the fields of nutrition and dietetics.
FoodCorps is an American non-profit organization whose mission is to work with communities to "connect kids to healthy food in school." FoodCorps places service members in limited-resource communities where they spend a year working with teachers and students to establish farm to school programs, incorporate nutrition education into school curricula, plant school gardens, and engage in other initiatives to improve school food. Like Teach for America and Habitat for Humanity, FoodCorps is a grantee of AmeriCorps.
Catherine E. Woteki was the under secretary for United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Research, Education, and Economics (REE) mission area, as well as the department's chief scientist. Her responsibilities included oversight of the four agencies that comprise REE, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Economic Research Service (ERS), and National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS.) The National Agriculture Library and National Arboretum also fall under this mission area. Since 2021, she has been a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
David L. Katz is an American physician, nutritionist and writer. He was the founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center that was founded at Griffin Hospital in 1998. Katz is the founder of True Health Initiative and is an advocate of plant-predominant diets.
Miriam E. Nelson is an American health and nutrition scholar, policy advisor, and author. She is the former president and CEO of Newman's Own Foundation, an independent, private foundation formed in 2005 by actor and race car driver Paul Newman to sustain the legacy of his philanthropic work. An international leader, scientist, and social entrepreneur, Nelson has been the principal investigator of multiple studies on exercise, nutrition, and public health, which have informed national public policy initiatives to improve public health. She had a controversial tenure as president of Hampshire College.
Icie Gertrude Macy Hoobler was an American biochemist who did research in human nutrition, specifically pertaining to mothers and children. Despite facing discrimination because of her gender, she became the first woman chair of a local section of the American Chemical Society and won 22 awards and honors for her laboratory's research.
Carolyn M. Mazure is an American psychologist and the Norma Weinberg Spungen and Joan Lebson Bildner Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the Yale School of Medicine. She created and directs Women’s Health Research at Yale — Yale’s interdisciplinary research center on health and gender.
Alison Tedstone MBE RNutr FAfN is Chief Nutritionist at Public Health England (PHE).
Sarah Bavly was a Dutch–Israeli nutritionist, educator, researcher, and author. Having immigrated from the Netherlands to British Mandatory Palestine in 1926, she became the chief dietitian for Hadassah hospitals and head of Hadassah's school lunch program. Her 1939 book Tzunatenu was a standard elementary-school textbook for nearly 30 years. She founded and directed the Institute of Nutrition Education in 1952 and was founder and dean of the College of Nutrition and Home Economics in Jerusalem from 1953 to 1965. After her retirement, she continued to engage in research and conducted periodic nutrition surveys for the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics.
Robert Michael Hecht is an American global health policy and financing expert. Hecht is currently Founder and President of Pharos Global Health Advisors. He has previously held positions with the World Bank, UNAIDS, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and Results for Development Institute. He serves as a lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and is a clinical professor at the Yale School of Public Health. He has published on a range of topics in global health and development, with a special focus on the economics, financing, and policies for infectious diseases, nutrition, and broader health system reform. He has been an advisor to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the World Health Organization, and UNITAID. Hecht holds a BA from Yale and a PhD from Cambridge University.
Jessica Fanzo is an American scientist. She is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food and Agriculture Policy and Ethics at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Prior to coming to Johns Hopkins, Fanzo was an assistant professor of Nutrition in the Institute of Human Nutrition and Department of Pediatrics at Columbia University. In January 2023, Columbia announced that Fanzo will rejoin its faculty as a professor in the Columbia Climate School.
Diane Feikert Birt is an American nutritionist. Following her retirement in January 2015, Birt was named a fellow of the American Society for Nutrition and National Academy of Medicine.
Jerold Robert Mande is an American nutritionist, public policy expert, and civil servant who served as Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety at the US Department of Agriculture, in charge of the Food Safety and Inspection Service, from 2009 to 2011. He has held numerous other senior positions in executive branch agencies and universities.
Rebecca M. Puhl is a researcher in the field of weight bias.
Esther Kathleen Keen Zolber was an American registered dietitian, Seventh-day Adventist and vegetarianism activist. She was president of the American Dietetic Association 1982–1983.